Boston Post Cane Holder Recalls Eventful Past

Friendship’s oldest resident recently received the coveted Boston Post gold-headed cane, much to her surprise and delight.

“I thought I owned the world,” said Ivy Gould, 97, about her reaction to the presentation.

Local selectmen Wesley Lash, Liz Dinsmore, and Earl Bachelder paid her a visit this summer to honor her with the cane.

“I didn’t think I was worthy,” she said with a glint in her eye.

Years go by fast enough but to think she would now be old enough to have so much fuss made over her age, gave her impetus to share the joys and hardships over those many years.

“I have a lot to be thankful to the Lord for,” she said.

Many fond memories came to the surface as she thought about her past along with some of the hard times.

“My fondest memory was rolling up the “Tattle Budget,” the local newspaper from Machias and sending them to the boys in the service,” Ivy remembers vividly.

Not all has been sweet in those 97 years of living from Addison and Jonesport to Friendship in later years. The bitter want along with it, which has presented a challenge to her Christian faith that she found was equal to it.

“I’ve been to hell and back,” she said.

The elder Yankee lady from a fishing family background common to coastal living of her era has failed to let any hardships she may have experience prevent her from living out her faith in tangible ways like opening her home to people without one for a time.

“I’ve got to say it was good. We had a good home and we had good parents,” she said.

As the parents of 11 children, Milton and Mertie Manchester taught Ivy, the third child and first girl, the essentials of the Christian way of life. She attributes much of her own works to their example.

“That’s how I’ve lived my life,” she said.

Once she reached school age, she walked to school, a relatively short walk compared to her classmates, but she and her siblings would wait for other school children who had much farther to walk and then walk with them the rest of the way to enjoy each other’s company.

As simple as life was with only gas lamps, no electricity and no automobiles, life became harder as time progressed but everyone else had the same lot, she said.

Responsibility to take care of the other children as an older member of the family fell to her early along with other chores, like helping with the planting and cultivating for the vegetables the family raised.

“We just had a grand time together,” she said.

With no nearby grocery or general stores with produce, and the Jonesport family had to depend on their own resources except when traveling peddlers and groceries arrived in a horse-drawn wagon.

“They would open the doors of the wagon and there were all kinds of compartments for the goods they had for sale,” she recalled.

Her memory of her mother includes the good cooking she did for the whole family. “She made biscuits that would melt in your mouth,” she with an expression of enjoyment suggesting she still could taste them in her mind.

Not unlike many youths in the early 1900s, she went to work after completing the 8th grade and never went further in her schooling. “We didn’t have to be a certain age to work,” she said.

When Ivy turned 20, she married Thurman Gould and moved to Kittery Point near where he was stationed in the U.S. Coast Guard. Later the couple moved to Beal’s Island off the coast from Jonesport.

When her first child Thurman, Jr. was born, she had to have the news radioed to her husband, who was aboard ship at the time.

“I never had it too easy until I met the Lord,” she said.

After Thurman, Jr. she gave birth to Keith, George, and LaVonne, now LaVonne Beal.

Currently Ivy boasts of 10 grandchildren, 21 great grandchildren, and two great-great grandchildren.

After having served in the Coast Guard for three years, her husband was discharged and he went back to fishing and in 1962, the couple made the hard decision to move to Friendship and leave Jonesport and their past behind.

“It was where we both were born and brought up,” she said. “We had a lot ties there (Jonesport), and our relatives were all around.”

Back then, Thurman had three boats he used for his trade as a sardine seiner which he became successful at, she said.

“He used to sail west every spring and fish the coves up and down the coast, sometimes as far as Boothbay, but usually Friendship is where he would stay for quite a while,” Ivy said. She was the one who took care of the financial aspects of his business for many years.

Later, she recalled when sardine factories closed, her husband decided to go lobstering instead of seining.

“There was no question where he wanted to put down his traps,” she said. “He hated to move his family from Jonesport, but it was what he felt he had to do.”

Ivy has many stories to tell of her childhood and later years and has a lot of advice to give to young people today, especially spiritual advice.

“I tell you one thing, give your heart to the Lord as soon as you can, and bring your children up in the Lord,” she said.

Recently, Ivy was honored, besides the gold-headed cane in Friendship. At a request to the leader of the band in the Fourth of July parade, he conducted the musical ensemble in a rendition of “God Bless America.”

Ivy stood on the porch where she has long stood during the annual event, since the parade has always formed in front of her house on the main street, and waved her hands proudly and enthusiastically as the band played her special request.